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Does Central Park make you think, “been there, done that”? Then head to the waterfront. Even New Yorkers are just discovering some of these new green getaways. And with those helpful city bike lanes, doing a tour from one to the next is a great full-day outing, with one-way bike rentals available at key spots along the route. If biking isn’t your thing, just hit the park to walk, kayak, watch stunning sunsets, or try to catch a free event from spring to fall.
THE HUDSON RIVER PARK
This 5-mi greenway park hugs the Hudson River from 59th Street to Battery Park. Although the park has a unified design, it’s divided into seven distinct sections that reflect the different neighborhoods just across the West Side Highway. The star attraction here—especially for kids—is the freshly refurbished Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum at Pier 86 across from 46th Street. A few blocks south, the Circle Line and World Yacht offer boat tours of the Hudson. At piers 96 and 40, the Downtown Boat House (www.downtownboathouse.org) offers free kayaking. A classic summer experience is the free outdoor movies with popcorn shown on Wednesday and Friday nights at Pier 54. Chelsea Piers, the mammoth sports center between piers 59 and 61, offers bowling, a driving range, ice skating, even trapeze classes. At Pier 66 Boathouse you can take a two-hour $80 introductory sailing course with Hudson River Community Sailing (hudsonsailing.org). The park also sponsors free tours and classes, including free fishing. (Yes, fishing in N.Y.C.) For a calendar of events and activities, go to | www.hudsonriverpark.org.
Getting Here With its location across the West Side Highway, the Hudson River Park isn’t exactly easy to get to. Crosstown buses at 14th, 23rd, and 42nd will get you close, but you’ll still have to hike across the highway. At Pier 84 across from 44th Street, you can rent a bike at Bike and Roll with an option of dropping it off at any of its locations in Central Park, Riverside Park, or Battery Park.
GOVERNORS ISLAND
A new addition to the city’s parks scene, this little island feels like a small New England town just 800 yards from N.Y.C.’s financial district. Tourists love the unparalleled
views of the harbor and Lower Manhattan, and locals love the out-of-the-city experience. The 172-acre park, built in part from landfill from subway excavations, was a base for the U.S. Army and Coast Guard for almost two centuries.
Until 2003 it was off-limits to the public, which could be why the 19th-century homes here are so well preserved. Anytime from May to October (when the park is open), you’ll find numerous weekend programs, including art showings, concerts, and family programs. Bikers take a bike over on the ferry or rent one on the island. The biking conditions are ideal, with 5 mi of car-free lanes (although you will have to watch for people movers!). For more information, including updated ferry schedules and a calendar of activities, go to | www.govisland.org.
Getting Here Governors Island is accessible by a pleasant seven-minute ferry ride that leaves from a dock at 10 South St., next to the Staten Island Ferry. (Don’t expect to get a seat for the trip!) By subway: 1 to South Ferry Station; 4, 5 to Bowling Green; or R, W to Whitehall St. Station. By bus: M1 (weekdays only), M6, M9, and M15.
THE HIGH LINE
Another new attraction, the High Line was once an elevated railroad track that serviced the long-ago factories along the lower west side. Neglected and forgotten, it went through a dramatic conversion into a highly acclaimed park that integrates landscaping with witty rail-inspired design. Vegetation here includes 210 species of plants, trees, and shrubs intended to reflect the wild plants that flourished for decades after the tracks were abandoned in 1980. The park—30 feet above street level—is open between Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 20th Street, with another section extending up to 30th Street expected to open in 2010. The viaduct runs alongside and sometimes through buildings, including Chelsea Market. Wonderful sweeping views of the Hudson River and an extended sight line of the Meatpacking District are the highlights, but some visitors also report getting an eyeful of uninhibited couples at the nearby Standard Hotel. On Sunday at 2 pm during warm-weather months, the park offers guided tours. For more information and a calendar, go to | www.thehighline.org or call | 212/500–6035.
Getting Here The High Line is accessible at Gansevoort, 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th streets with elevator access at 14th and 16th. Sorry, the elevated route is strictly for pedestrians, so park that bike and walk. The High Line is two blocks west of the subway station at 14th Street and 8th Avenue, which is served by the L/A/C/E. You can also take the C/E to 23rd Street and walk two blocks west. The 1/2/3 stops at 14th Street and 7th Avenue, three blocks away. By bus: M11 to Washington Street, M11 to 9th Avenue, M14 to 9th Avenue, M23 to 10th Avenue, M34 to 10th Avenue.
BATTERY PARK CITY
Built over the past 30 years on landfill jutting out into the Hudson River, Battery Park City is a high-rise residential neighborhood split in two by the World Financial Center and its marina. Although the Hudson River Park promenade borders BPC alongside the West Side Highway, locals prefer the route that follows the river’s edge through BPC—it’s the more scenic path heading to the World Trade Center site from Battery Park. In South Battery Park City you’ll pass by the Museum of Jewish Heritage, at 36 Battery Place. Nearby are several reasonably priced outdoor restaurants with stunning views of the Statue of Liberty. Gigino at Wagner Park (20 Battery Pl. | 212/528– 2228) offers Italian cuisine, and reservations for the outside patio are a must. Or skip the food in favor of high art; public exhibits are scattered throughout BPC. In Wagner Park, Louise Bourgeois has created Eyes, two large balls that represent oversize, ahem, body parts. At Vesey Street is the Irish Hunger Memorial by artist Brian Tolle, which includes an Irish cottage dismantled stone by stone and reassembled here. And in Rockefeller Park at Chambers Street, Tom Otterness has created The Real World, a popular collection of whimsical—and dark—bronze sculptures, including tiny workers rolling giant pennies.
Getting Here By subway: South Battery Park: 1, R to Rector Place; 4, 5 to Wall Street. North Battery Park: 1, 2, 3, A, C to Chambers Street; E to World Trade Center. By bus: M9, M20, M22.
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Taking a guided tour is a good idea, even if you prefer flying solo. It will help you get your bearings in this city, and it’s a great way to investigate out-of-the-way areas, or learn about a particular facet of the city’s history, inhabitants, or architecture.
BOAT TOURS
A Circle Line Cruise (Pier 83 at W. 42nd St., Midtown West | 212/563–3200 | www.circleline42.com) around Manhattan Island is one of the best ways to get oriented in the city. The three-hour, 35-mi circumnavigation gives a good sense of where things are. The cruises run at least once daily; the cost is $35 per person (there’s also a shorter, two-hour “semi-Circle” option available for $31).
Manhattan By Sail (North Cove Marina, Lower Manhattan | 10280 | 212/619–0885 | www.shearwatersailing.com) has an 82-foot yacht dating from the 1920s, sails from the North Cove Marina at the World Financial Center and makes daily 90-minute public sails and Sunday brunch sails from mid-April through midOctober. They also offer two-hour sunset sails in June, July, and August. Reservations are advised, but they can be made only a maximum of two weeks in advance for sunset sails. Fares start at $45.
BUS TOURS
Gray Line New York (777 8th Ave., between 47th and 48th Sts., Midtown West | 800/669–0051 | www.graylinenewyork.com) runs a number of “hop-on, hopoff” double-decker bus tours in various languages, including a downtown Manhattan loop, upper Manhattan loop, Brooklyn loop, and evening tours of the city. Packages include entrance fees to attractions.
WALKING TOURS
Big Onion Walking Tours (212/439–1090 | www.bigonion.com) lead themed tours such as “Irish New York” and “Jewish Lower East Side,” as well as famous multiethnic eating tours and guided walks through every neighborhood from Harlem to the Financial District and Brooklyn. Tours run daily and cost $15; add $5 for tours that
include stops to eat.
Joyce Gold (212/242–5762 | www.nyctours.com) has been conducting neighborhood walking tours since 1976. Her theme walks, such as “Gangs of New York and the Bloody Five Points,” and “Hell Ain’t Hot: This Here’s Hell’s Kitchen,” run on weekends and cost $15.
The Municipal Art Society (212/935–3960, 212/439– 1049 recorded information | www.mas.org) conducts walking tours that emphasize architecture and history. The cost is $15 per person. MAS also runs two weekly tours: downtown Manhattan on Tuesday, and Grand Central Station on Wednesday. Weekly tours begin at 12:30; there’s a $10 suggested donation.
New York City Cultural Walking Tours (212/979–2388 | www.nycwalk.com) have covered such topics as buildings’ gargoyles and the Millionaire’s Mile of 5th Avenue. Twohour public tours run on some Sundays from March to December, and are $15 per person (no reservations needed); private tours can be scheduled throughout the week at $60 per hour (most tours run about three hours).
New York Food Tours (917/617–7158 | www.foodtoursofny.com) offers walking tours for the foodie on the go. Options include “The Freakiest and Funniest Food” and a “Chinatown Discovery” tour. Prices start at $43 for 2½ hours of walking and noshing.
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Main Table of Contents
Lower Manhattan: with Ground Zero
SoHo, NoLIta, and Little Italy
Lower East Side and the East Village
Greenwich Village, the West Village, Chelsea, and the
Meatpacking District
Union Square, the Flatiron District, Gramercy Park, and
Murray Hill
Midtown: With Times Square and Rockefeller Center The Upper East Side
Central Park
The Upper West Side
Harlem
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Planning
The Financial District and South Street Seaport: Top
Touring Experiences | Worth Noting
Chinatown and TriBeCa: Top Touring Experiences | Top
Attractions | Worth Noting
Updated by Arthur Bovino
Pirates, rogue politicians, upwardly mobile go-getters, robber barons, scrappy entrepreneurs, and roaming packs of pigs scouring the streets for garbage: what does this motley crew have in common? They’re the citizenry that built and inhabited the southern tip of Manhattan in various eras, and in varying combinations.
Lower Manhattan, or in the parlance of New Yorkers emphatically giving directions to tourists, “all the way downtown,” has long been where the action—or transaction —is. Back when the neighborhood was the village of New Amsterdam (1626–47), its director-general, Peter Minuit, made the quintessential deal on behalf of the Dutch, trading knives, tools, and cloth to an Algonquin tribe, the Canarsees, for all of Manhattan (that he bought it for $24 is more or less an urban myth).
In 1789, a year before New York City lost its title as America’s capital, George Washington was sworn in as the nation’s first president at Federal Hall, where, two years later, Congress ratified the Bill of Rights.
Little is left from Manhattan’s colonial era, however: apart from a precious few structures built in the 1700s, the 19thcentury brick facades of South Street Seaport are about as old as it gets here. As you’ll notice immediately, the neighborhood has largely given way to the sometimes intimidating (and on weekends, seemingly deserted) skyscraper-lined canyons of the Financial District on Wall Street and lower Broadway. Bounded by the East and Hudson rivers to the east and west, respectively, and by Chambers Street and Battery Park to the north and south, this is an area you can fully and best appreciate by walking its streets.
You’ll want to see what’s here, but above all you’ll want to see what’s not, most notably in that empty but evolving gulf among skyscrapers: the World Trade Center site, known
as Ground Zero.
The southern tip has often served as a microcosm for a city that offers as many first shots as it does second chances, so it’s appropriate that it’s the key point of departure for the
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This experience should never be dismissed as too touristy. Like nothing else, the excursion will remind you that this is a city of immigrants and survivors.
The city’s downtown neighborhoods give you a close-up of the many cultures of Manhattan. Tucked to the west, south of Canal Street, residential TriBeCa (triangle below Canal Street) has a quieter vibe and owes some of its cred to Robert De Niro, whose investments in the area include the TriBeCa Grill and the nonprofit TriBeCa Film Center. Unlike nearby SoHo (south of Houston) and NoLIta’s (north of Little Italy) in-your-face commercial presence, TriBeCa keeps more to itself. And although TriBeCa’s money is hidden away behind grand industrial facades, you can get a taste of it at one of the posh neighborhood restaurants or when the stars turn out for the annual TriBeCa Film Festival in spring.
Chinatown, by contrast, is a living, breathing, anything-but- quiet ethnic enclave: a quarter of the city’s 400,000 Chinese residents live here above storefronts crammed with souvenir shops and restaurants serving every imaginable regional Chinese cuisine, from modest dumplings to sumptuous Hong Kong feasts. What started as a 7-block area has morphed into more than 40 blocks above and below Canal Street with tea shops, restaurants, Buddhist temples, herbalists, acupuncturists, and pungent open-air markets.
PLANNING
MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME
Visit Lower Manhattan during business hours on a weekday to capture the district’s true vitality—but expect to be jostled on the crowded sidewalks if you stand still too long or walk too slowly.
On weekends you could feel like a lone explorer in a canyon of buildings in the Financial District. If you look, you can find some spots for good food and nightlife, but the neighborhood largely shuts down at night. End your visit by watching the sunset over the Hudson River.
Chinatown is lively pretty much any time of day, but more so on weekends, when there’s so much sidewalk shopping, you’ll likely have to walk in the street.
GETTING HERE AND AROUND
Many subway lines service this area. The Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau station, serviced by nine different subway lines, puts you within walking distance of City Hall, South Street Seaport, and the World Trade Center site
If Chinatown is your downtown destination, don’t even think of driving—its cramped streets and heavy congestion make it a tough place to navigate and an even more disastrous place to park. The subway is a better idea, with the J, N, R, Q, Z, and 6 (Canal Street) and the B and D (Grand Street) all serving the area. The 1 subway line stops in the heart of TriBeCa (Franklin Street).
FODOR’S CHOICE
Brooklyn Bridge
Ellis Island
Ground Zero
Statue of Liberty
TOP EXPERIENCES
Visiting Ground Zero
Riding the Staten Island Ferry
Eating dim sum in Chinatown
Touring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty
Snapping a photo in front of Wall Street’s bull
Strolling down TriBeCa’s Harrison Street
BEST FOR KIDS
Batter Park
Castle Clinton
South Street Seaport Historic District
Governors Island
THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT AND SOUTH STREET SEAPORT: TOP TOURING
EXPERIENCES
THE BATTERY’S DOWN
The best piece of navigational advice about the city still resides in the tune “New York, New York” (the one from the musical On the Town): “The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down.” But once you head down (take the 4 or 5 train to the Bowling Green stop at Broadway and Battery Place, the 1 train to South Ferry, or the R train to Whitehall), you’ll want a clue about what’s actually down here.
Perhaps mercifully, after all your walking as well as standing on buses and trains with no available seats, Battery Park has plenty of places to sit, including tiers of wood benches that line the promenade facing New York Harbor. On a reasonably clear day you’ll be able to see Governors Island, a former Coast Guard installation now managed by the National Park Service; a hilly Staten Island in the distance; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; and the old railway terminal in Liberty State Park, on the mainland in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Your key point of interest within the park, as well as where to buy tickets for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, is
Castle Clinton National Monument, once a fort intended as a defense against the British, though the castle’s cannons were never fired in war. The building saw far more action in later centuries as an opera house, an aquarium, and a processing center for immigrants. In 2005 the Bosque Gardens by landscape artist Piet Oudulf were opened, as was the Spiral Fountain, with 35 illuminated and interactive jets.
The northern tip of Battery Park skims Bowling Green, New York’s first public park and a great place with fantastic views. On Bowling Green’s south side a warren of blocks contain additional remnants of New York’s colonial history, including Fraunces Tavern, established in 1762. It was the hostelry of Samuel Fraunces, George Washington’s steward and one of the colonial era’s most prominent black New Yorkers. George Washington was fond of the tavern, and the American Revolution was in part planned here. History buffs will want to view the American Revolution and other early New York City collections in the Fraunces Tavern Museum, which includes four 19th-century buildings in addition to the 18th-century Fraunces Tavern building.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Late in the evening of December 15, 1989, sculptor Arturo Di Modica left a 7,000-pound surprise gift for N.Y.C. under the Christmas tree in front of the New York Stock Exchange —his bronze Charging Bull statue. The bull quickly became the icon of Wall Street. Ask New Yorkers who don’t frequent the downtown area where the statue is and they’ll usually tell you it’s somewhere on Wall Street near the stock exchange. But the statue actually resides in Bowling Green, where it was moved after police complained that it was blocking traffic in its original location. Since the city never commissioned it, the bull is still officially dubbed a “temporary installation.”
After you pose for snapshots with the bull, head northeast to Wall Street, one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world. The epicenter of Wall Street is—you guessed it—the New York Stock Exchange, at the intersection of Wall and Broad streets. The stock exchange traces its beginnings to a group of brokers who, in 1792, shortly after Alexander Hamilton issued the first bonds in an attempt to raise money to cover Revolution-caused debt, were in the habit of meeting under a buttonwood tree that once grew on Wall Street. The exchange isn’t open to visitors, but there is a related museum at the Federal Hall National Memorial.
Look at the facade of 23 Wall Street, just across from the exchange. The deep pockmarks and craters were created on September 16, 1920, when, at noon, a horse-drawn wagon packed with explosives detonated in front of the building, killing 33 people and injuring 400. Those responsible were never apprehended, and no one ever claimed credit for what was the worst terrorist attack on American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing and later 9/11.
Marking Wall Street’s far west end is Trinity Church, whose parish was founded by King William III of England in 1697. Trinity’s burial ground serves as a resting place for a half-dozen notables, including Alexander Hamilton.
If you get tuckered out, do as the locals do and hit the spa. The Wall Street Bath & Spa (88 Fulton St. | 212/766– 8600) offers old-school saunas and plunging pools for $32.50 a day. Those with bigger bonuses should snag an appointment at the Setai Spa (40 Broad St., 3rd floor above SHO restaurant | 212/363–5418). The luxurious massages and facials make for excellent top-tier pampering.
THE STREET OF SHIPS
It’s hard to see history in Lower Manhattan’s rebuilt and bustling streets. But at South Street Seaport history is
right in your face. The seaport was created to time-warp visitors back to the days when N.Y.C. was a bustling nautical town, and it succeeds in part. Its spiffy little fleet does bring you back to the 19th century, when tall ships sailed from South Street, a time when pirates—Captain Kidd had a house near the wharves—and merchants walked the cobblestone streets and warehouses held treasures from exotic ports. What the seaport, in all its scrubbed tourist beauty, does not include among its careful restorations are the gambling houses, brothels, and saloons that were once so common in this area.
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TOP ATTRACTIONS IN THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT AND SOUTH STREET SEAPORT
Battery Park.
Jutting out at the southernmost point of Manhattan, tree-
filled Battery Park is a respite from the narrow, winding, and (on weekdays) jam-packed streets of the Financial District. Even if you don’t plan to stay for long, carve out a couple of minutes from sightseeing time to sit on a bench and take in the view, which includes the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. On crystal-clear days you can see all the way to Port Elizabeth’s cranes, which seem to mimic Lady Liberty’s stance. Of course, looking away from the water and toward the buildings, there’s a feeling that you’re at the beginning of the city, and a sense of all the possibility it offers just a few blocks in.
The park’s main structure is Castle Clinton National Monument, the ticket-office site and takeoff point for ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This monument was once 200 feet off the southern tip of the island, located in what was called the Southwest Battery, and was erected during the War of 1812 to defend the city. (The East Battery sits across the harbor on Governors Island.) As dirt and debris from construction were dumped into the harbor, the island expanded, eventually engulfing the landmark. Later, from 1855 to 1890, it served as America’s first official immigration center (Ellis Island opened in 1892).
The interior of the park is loaded with monuments and statues, including The Sphere, which for three decades stood on the plaza at the World Trade Center as a symbol of peace. Damaged but still intact after the collapse of the towers, it serves as a temporary memorial to those who lost their lives.
The southern link in a chain of parks connecting Battery Park north to Chambers Street, Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park has a flat, tidy lawn and wide benches from which to view the harbor or the stream of runners and in-line skaters on the promenade. A brick structure that holds public bathrooms and a restaurant provides additional views from its flat roof. | Broadway and Battery Pl., Lower Manhattan | 10004 | Subway: 4, 5 to Bowling Green.
Fodor’s Choice | Brooklyn Bridge.
“A drive-through cathedral” is how the critic James Wolcott described one of New York’s noblest and most recognized landmarks. “The best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken,” said Walt Whitman upon seeing the nearly completed bridge. It spans the East River, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn. A walk across its promenade—a boardwalk elevated above a roadway and shared by pedestrians, in-line skaters, and cyclists—takes about 40 minutes from the heart of Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan’s civic center. It’s worth traversing for the astounding views. |
Lower Manhattan | Subway: 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall; J, Z to Chambers St.; A, C to High St.–Brooklyn Bridge.
Fodor’s Choice | Ellis Island.
Between 1892 and 1924 approximately 12 million men, women, and children first set foot on U.S. soil at the Ellis Island federal immigration facility. By the time the facility closed in 1954, it had processed ancestors of more than 40% of Americans living today. The island’s main building, now a national monument, reopened in 1990 as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, which is divided into four major exhibit areas with numerous galleries containing artifacts, photographs, and taped oral histories. The centerpiece of the museum is the white-tile Registry Room (also known as the Great Hall). It feels dignified and cavernous today, but photographs show that it took on a multitude of configurations through the years, always packed with humanity undergoing one form or another of screening. While you’re there, take a look out the Registry Room’s tall, arched windows and try to imagine what passed through immigrants’ minds as they viewed Lower Manhattan’s skyline to one side and the Statue of Liberty to the other. Because there’s so much to take in, it’s a good idea to make use of the museum’s interpretive tools. Check at the visitor desk for free film tickets, ranger tour times, and special programs. The audio tour is worth its $8 price: it takes you through the exhibits, providing thorough, engaging commentary interspersed with recordings of immigrants themselves recalling their experiences. Along with the Registry Room, the museum’s features include the ground-level Railroad Ticket Office, which has several interactive exhibits and a three-dimensional graphic representation of American immigration patterns; the American Family Immigration History Center, where you can search Ellis Island’s records for your own ancestors (for a $5 fee); and, outside, the American Immigrant Wall of Honor, where the names of more than 700,000 immigrant Americans are inscribed along a promenade facing the Manhattan skyline. (For $150 you can add a family member’s name to the wall.) | 212/363–3200 Ellis Island, 212/561–4500 Wall of Honor information | www.ellisisland.org | Free | 877/523–9849 ferry, $12 roundtrip | www.statuecruises.com | Daily 9–5:15, extended hrs in summer (current hrs online at www.nps.gov/elis/planyourvisit/hours.xhtml.
Federal Hall National Memorial.
It’s a museum now, but this site has a most notable claim: George Washington was sworn in here as the first president of the United States in 1789, when the building was Federal Hall of the new nation. When the city lost